All eyes are on Golden State, where championship or bust is the motto this season—because with KEVIN DURANT and STEPHEN CURRY on the same roster, the 2016-17 Warriors are one of the most loaded teams in the history of the NBA. Let them be great.
Media Day is an odd way to celebrate the start of the NBA season. Instead of partaking in on-court action, players are whisked through a cycle of media responsibilities and peppered with questions that range from bizarre to silly to—on rare occasion—thought-provoking. Since no basketball has been played in months, guys are often asked to weigh in on hot topics in the national conversation—this year, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s peaceful protest during the national anthem is discussed with nearly every player—or how they spent their summers, or what they hope to accomplish over the course of the next six months.
The process itself is jarring. Cameras flash everywhere as players go through a gauntlet of TV interviews, press conferences, photo shoots, radio hits, podcast spots, Snapchats, tweets and flicks for the ’gram. There are strong “first day of school” vibes.
Out in Oakland, the calendar reads late September but it feels like mid-July as the temperature creeps into the mid-’90s. Though players aren’t scheduled to show up for another few hours, the Warriors’ training facility is already starting to fill up with camera crews, media and team staff members waiting to get a glimpse of two of the game’s biggest stars side-by-side as teammates for the first time.
By our estimation, it is the highest-attended Media Day across the League (perhaps in history even), and for good reason. Not since LeBron joined the Heat in the summer of 2010 has a basketball team captivated the country to this degree. The team, which has been cast as the NBA’s new villain, will be the League’s most covered—maybe the most covered in all of sports—and Warriors PR guru Raymond Ridder is going through an exhausting list of beat reporters and national writers who will be covering the squad on a day-to-day basis.
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